


Consultation Hours Are 2 To 4 p.m.

by blythechild



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Marriage Proposal, Presumed Dead, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-27
Updated: 2012-05-27
Packaged: 2017-11-06 03:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after Sherlock's death, he comes back to 221B Baker Street. Neither he nor John react as expected.</p><p>Written for the prompt: "post-Reichenbach, Sherlock returns and John punches him, which causes Sherlock to propose".</p><p>This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created for personal amusement. The story contains adult themes and should not be read by those under the age of 14.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Consultation Hours Are 2 To 4 p.m.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written in response to a prompt left in the comment_fic community on livejournal. While I prefer not to speculate about what will happen in the series after season 2, this piece sort of wrote itself.

“John,” Mrs. Hudson’s voice sailed up the stairwell. “Someone’s here for you.”

He sighed and sunk deeper into his chair that sat opposite an empty one. She was constantly trying to rouse him and, while he appreciated the effort, it was annoying. He wasn’t being maudlin, he was _thinking_ , just like S-… 

He was _thinking_.

“John!”

Oh honestly… he was on a case right now even if it looked like he was just watching his tea grow cold while staring into space. Mrs. Hudson needed to adjust herself to the new reality of life at 221B Baker Street, and the new John Watson. This is who he was now. It had been a year and he hadn’t topped himself or turned to drink or even rearranged the furniture. He was working and talking and making all of the outward signs of living - what more did she want? He couldn’t pretend that he was happy - not for her, not for anyone - but he was never the sort for giddiness in the first place. He knew that life could be flippantly cruel and the soldier in him said to save his tears - best to just get on with it.

“ _John!_ ”

He launched himself out of his chair nearly upsetting his tea on the arm. He let his boots fall loudly on the stairs as he descended.

“Mrs. Hudson, you know that consultation hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2p.m. to 4p.m. I’m on the Anjari case at the moment and can’t…”

“Anjari’s in the Azores with his partner’s son. He embezzled the company’s pension and when the younger man discovered it, Anjari seduced him to keep him under control. A crude, albeit effective, tactic…”

Sherlock Holmes stood in the foyer supporting the arm of a rather shocked and pale Mrs. Hudson. He looked like he had just popped off to the shops rather than the dead man that he was supposed to be. _He was dead - I held his body… I saw the unfocused stare, the blood seeping into the pavement cracks and trickling into the gutter…_

His hair was a bit longer, his clothes unfamiliar, but the smug abrasiveness was front and center, as always. “Mrs. Anjari should take this information to the police and use it to get in front of the embezzlement and conspiracy charges. It’s the best she can hope for - she’s never going to get a dime out of her husband…”

Anger flared up in John at the casual way Sherlock dismissed the case - as he always did. It was _John’s_ case just as it was _John’s_ business to solve it. 

Because Sherlock was DEAD. Some things are supposed to be immutable. It’s why the grief hurt so much: it was supposed to be forever. But perhaps ‘forever’, like many other concepts, didn’t apply to Sherlock Holmes, and John was just another sucker who fell for it.

Sherlock waved the case summation away like an annoying housefly. “Since when do we have ‘consultation hours’?”

“ _We?_ ” John seethed.

_It’s impossible. I saw him in the morgue… Molly let me in…_

“Yes, ‘we’, John.” Sherlock seemed pained to point out the obvious. “Last time I looked this was my flat as well. Not to mention _my_ consulting detective practice…”

John reacted without consideration, rolling his weight forward, pivoting his waist and shoulders, and placing all of his strength behind the fist that slammed into Sherlock’s jaw. Though Sherlock was taller and surprisingly resilient despite his lankiness, he went down with an ungainly thud, knocking the back of his head against the doorframe.

“Oh, John!” Mrs. Hudson wailed. “What has gotten into you!”

“You cock-knocking, arrogant twat!” John loomed over Sherlock, his fists curled and his shoulders hunched for a fight.

Sherlock waved off Mrs. Hudson’s ‘poor dears’ and blinked at John in genuine shock. His hand went to his jaw and came back bloody as he tried to stretch his mouth and ascertain the damage. He got his legs under him and slowly straightened up the side of the hallway wall. John was pleased to see that he looked none too steady.

“Come in and I’ll get you some ice…” Mrs. Hudson had insinuated herself under Sherlock’s right arm. She shot John a withering look. “You boys! No better than a pair of football hooligans…”

“I’m fine, Mrs. Hudson. John has the right to his opinion, even if he’s being less articulate than usual.”

“Fuck you, Sherlock.” John hissed and turned to climb back up the stairs.

“My point exactly.” Sherlock murmured.

John thumped up the stairs refusing to look back. His pulse throbbed in his throat, his head, and his fists. He was finding it difficult to breathe normally. The globes of pale light bobbing at the edges of his vision told him that if he didn’t get his heart rate down he was going to pass out. He had no intention of doing that in front of Mrs. Hudson.

“May I come up?” Sherlock called up after him.

“It’s _your_ bloody flat too, isn’t it?” John barked over his shoulder.

John went to his chair and grabbed his cold tea. He gulped down half of it and listened as Sherlock’s tread climbed the stairs. John’s hand was shaking as it held the teacup. He noticed for the first time that his knuckles throbbed. He was fairly certain that one of them was broken. Sherlock had a hard, bloody head. He stomped into the kitchen and found a bag of ancient frozen peas in the icebox. When he turned back, he saw Sherlock standing in the living room staring at the empty chairs.

“Are you going to tell me why?” John started.

“You haven’t changed a thing.” Sherlock murmured.

“Sherlock!”

“Yelling is unnecessary, John. I heard you.”

“Then answer me!”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It doesn’t concern you.” Sherlock turned and faced John. Even at a distance, John could see the beginnings of a large bruise spreading across the man’s lower jaw and reaching up to his split lip. It was a pale blush against Sherlock’s complexion, but it would soon turn into a vicious, dark stain. John tossed the bag of frozen peas at Sherlock. The man’s eyes widened in some unspeakable expression but he caught the bag nonetheless.

“Doesn’t concern me.” John reached back into the freezer for some ice. “Of course not.”

“It’s my life, John. My decision.”

John wrapped the ice in a tea towel and gave Sherlock one of his sarcastic smiles as he walked into the sitting room.

“It never occurred to you that _your_ life was a part of mine when you made this decision, did it?”

“Of course it did, John. Everything occurs to me.”

“Selfish prick.”

John turned away. He wanted to hit him again. He wanted to hit him and then… something else. An unpleasant ache radiated from the upper left quadrant of his body and, unlike his hand, he didn’t have anything that could numb it. It was painful having an insensitive sociopath for a best friend.

“What do you want from me?” The frozen peas muffled Sherlock’s neutral tone. “Do you want me to say that I thought about you before making this decision? I did. Does hearing that make you feel any better?”

“You’re not concerned with how I feel.” It wasn’t a challenge, merely a statement of fact.

“On the contrary, you’re possibly the only person whose feelings I take into account before acting. It’s quite cumbersome, actually.”

“Then how could you do it?” John’s voice was quiet. “You _knew_ that I’d never believe that load of bollocks you told me over the phone… if your plan was to disappear, why make me into the one guardian of your memory? Why come back at all?”

Sherlock was silent long enough for John to turn and make sure that he hadn’t vanished again. He was staring out the window; all highlighted angles and elongated limbs. He seemed unreadable and unreachable.

Typical.

“I found it… difficult.” He said eventually.

“You found what difficult?”

“Being without you. You made me better as well.”

Colour drained from John’s face as he realized that Sherlock had witnessed his graveside confession months before. He’d been so alone; his survival precariously balanced on the existence of a strange, infuriating man who was never entirely without ulterior motives. John remembered being ashamed of his frantic dependency in that moment as well as being devastated at losing someone he loved so dearly. The combination of emotions, expressed only because he thought he was alone, was anathema to both his military upbringing and his Englishness. He was mortified that Sherlock had seen it and would break it down before him like elements in a mildly interesting mystery.

“It’s a complex problem, John, and I haven’t solved it yet.” Sherlock’s voice was quieter than usual. “I gradually became aware that I might need you to help me with this after all. So I came back.”

John snorted in disbelief. Why was he surprised that Sherlock’s motivations were selfish?

“What were you expecting? A marriage proposal?” Sherlock stared.

John’s head shot up as he gave Sherlock an incredulous look. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to come up with a suitably shocked retort knowing that the longer he hesitated, the more he confirmed what he was trying to suppress.

_Ridiculous! Tell the prat that he’s being ridiculous! Why would he even think such a thing? It’s preposterous… beyond the pale, truly. Go on… tell him…_

“What an extraordinary thing to say.”

“John…”

“I must have hit you harder than I thought.”

“John,” Sherlock stepped forward and grabbed him by the arms, forcing them to look each other in the eye. “I am truly sorry that I put you through this. You are the only person to whom I’ve had an emotional connection and not resented them for it. If I didn’t find the whole concept hopelessly boring, I would ask you to marry me right now.”

“That’s ludicrous!”

“Oh, I agree - a legal document establishes nothing save ownership, which cannot apply to human beings in any case - so why bother?”

“That’s not what I meant, Sherlock!” John started doing that thing where he got more irate in direct proportion to Sherlock’s calm analysis. “We can’t… it’s out of the question… we’re two men… two friends. We’re not a _couple_ … For chrissakes, we’ve never even kissed!”

Sherlock stared at John’s apoplectic expression for a minute.

“Yes, I see what you’re saying.” He nodded as if conceding an argument, then he stepped forward and pulled John in for a kiss.

John placed his hands against Sherlock’s chest, spilling ice across the floor, and pushed for all he was worth. Sherlock’s grip was remarkably strong. John struggled but Sherlock’s hand cupped the back of his head and forced them together. To John’s dismay, he actually moaned as his lips parted and he allowed Sherlock in. Inconceivable happiness warmed every inch of him in an instant. The sensation was so alien that it frightened him. What if this was a prank or one of Sherlock’s infernal experiments? John had no desire to be tested - not about _this_ , not after everything that he’d gone through in the last year…

He was going to have to redefine himself completely after this and it terrified him. But he no longer wanted to push Sherlock away. _If this is calculated, if this is a step in one of his endless games, I’ll kill him myself._

Sherlock pulled away first, watching John closely for a reaction. His grip had lightened; John felt Sherlock’s hand rest along the back of his neck, no longer holding him in place.

“I should hit you again for that.” John groused.

“Nonsense. It’s exactly what you’ve wanted for ages.”

“It’s not like you to do what others want of you.” John hedged his insecurity in a statement.

The deflection made Sherlock smirk in that all-knowing way he had about him. The familiarity of it suddenly jerked John back into reality: _He’s alive! He’s really here… I don’t have to do this alone anymore…_

“It’s true - I don’t think of others before myself.” 

John knew that he wouldn’t get more of an admission than that. Sherlock leaned in and then waited for John to meet him halfway. John made up his mind in that moment that he could live with reinventing himself if Sherlock could so easily accept what they were to each other. They moved against each other in slow grasps and hitched breaths, both happy to be selfish with one another. Now was proceeding just fine - the future was something that they could argue about later. And they would - John wasn’t prepared to jettison his anger and pain because they suddenly found that they were indispensable to one another. Reparations would have to be made. _He’ll have to tell me what happened on that roof - he can’t hide from me forever. I’ll die wringing it from him if need be…_ Suddenly John pulled on Sherlock’s lower lip and the other man backed away.

“Ouch!” His hand went to the lip that had split anew and was bleeding.

“Sissy.” John murmured. He handed Sherlock the melting bag of peas again. “Here - apply peas liberally. I’ll put the kettle on.”

Sherlock’s stare glittered with something calculating. He gingerly pressed the peas to his jaw. “It must take the sting out of being kissed by a man to have physical evidence of your own alpha maleness bruising up before your eyes…”

John smiled and lit the burner on the stove, arranging cups, saucers, and the fixings for tea as they both took it.

“Careful now, you don’t want it to turn into a fetish, do you?”

John knew that he’d let a second cup of tea grow cold when he heard the bag of peas hit the floor as quick footsteps came up behind him.


End file.
